An inside look at living in poverty

Macomb Daily staff photo by David Dalton
Sandeev Sarna, left, and Kathi Poindexter take on the roles of family members trying to survive financially during a poverty simulation program presented by Leadership Macomb.

But even with Nolan’s salary and Ned’s disability check, other expenses eat into their budget and they find themselves with bill collectors at their door.

It’s a familiar story in America these days. So how do they survive?

That was the question to be considered when Leadership Macomb engaged its members in a poverty simulation program. Based on Missouri’s Community Action Poverty Simulation, the session focused on a month in the lives of several families who are trying to make ends meet. They were to: keep their home secure, buy the required amount of food each week, keep utilities on, make loan payments, pay for clothing and miscellaneous expenses, keep children in school, and respond appropriately to unexpected factors in their lives.

The exercise isn’t necessarily designed to provide answers, rather to make others stop and think about what it’s like to face such real-life concerns as whether you’ll be able to feed your family, keep your home from foreclosure and pay utility bills.

“The last five years have been the most difficult on the middle class,” said program facilitator Jim Perlaki, vice president of external relations for Common Ground, an organization that seeks to end homelessness. “Hopefully, we’re not too desensitized to see there are people in need around us.”

Families faced the legal system scenarios, too. Hearing his parents continually arguing about money prompted an 8-year-old boy to try and steal a gun from a pawn shop. His “mother” Betty Boling (played by Jody Doherty, director of health management services for Health Alliance Plan) was arrested because her unemployed husband told officials that she was supposed to be caring for the child. That wasn’t true, but Betty was put in jail, leaving the family with no source of income.

“It’s an eye-opening experience and it’s scary,” said Doherty, adding that the bureaucratic system can be “time-consuming for these families and frustrating.”

Other workshop families — whose roles were based on real-life characters — saw their homes go into foreclosure when they couldn’t come up with their mortgage payment. As a representative of the fictitious Sweeney Mortgage and Realty, collector Karen Vaughn’s unpleasant job was to tell families to pay their rent “or you’ll be evicted next week.” (In real life, Vaughn is employed by American Ink Printing & Graphics in Clinton Township.)

Participants also faced the real-life issue of transportation. As it is for many people today, services to help them may be available but they have no way of getting to them. The families in the workshop received a certain number of transportation tickets and had to carefully ration them so they could get to work, the bank, grocery store or social services offices.

In addition to the mortgage company, other “services” offered to these families included the Building Block Child Care Center, Quik Cash, Realville Public Schools, Big Dave’s Pawn Shop, the Department of Social Services, Food-A-Rama Supercenter and Friendly Utility Co.

As the 40 Leadership Macomb participants discovered trying to keep these homes and families together: It’s not a game. This is real life.

“People need to care enough about each other to make a difference,” Perlaki concluded. “Today we got a glimpse of what some people in American struggle with every day.”

Leadership Macomb is a nonprofit organization whose 9-month program brings together leaders from numerous institutions, disciplines and geographic areas to strengthen their leadership skills, develop long-term business relationships and obtain in-depth information about Macomb County. The poverty simulation exercise was part of the group’s Health & Human Services Day sponsored by McLaren Macomb Hospital. That program was held at the Mat Gaberty Heart Center at McLaren in Mount Clemens.